On the Disability Rights Movement

[greenie_breizh]

Through an NPR report that a friend recommended, I started reading chaoticidealism's journal, and I suggest you all do the same. In my own time I've focused more on the type of marginalization that non-whiteness, non-heterosexuality and femininity/femaleness bring onto people, but obviously marginalization isn't limited to these particular experiences. Disability

Comments

[heikki_cheren]

Ahhh, "neurotypical"... I remember being impressed by the use of it in a book I read some time ago, "The way things look to me". A large part of the book is said from the pov of an Aspie girl.
Maybe I had already met this word before, but this is where I really noticed it.

[greenie_breizh]

Cool! It seems like it's a pretty common term in the neurodiversity community, which is neat. :)

[petit_rhino]

I've come across "neurotypical" quite a lot in Autism/Aspie books and communities.

I like it too. It's time people got used to thinking of white/straight/able/male as something other than "neutral".

[greenie_breizh]

I didn't realize it was common, but I like it. I wish mainstream reports would acknowledge the power of community more (I feel like they made it sound like she came up with the term, rather than emphasized an involvement in the neurodiversity community.)

Exactly. I feel like having a label forces you to think about who you are, which we often don't do in relation to our positions of privilege.

[lounalune]

Welcome to the club, and thanks for the link, I'll check it out. You might want to check the group blog Feminists with Disabilities. It has a daily list of recommended reading, which is great for going further. You might also like to know that the labels currently abled and TAB (temporarily able-bodied) apply to you, though I'm not too fond of the second one because, despite the fact that it's limited to the absence of physical disabilities, it's often used for currently abled people in general.

[greenie_breizh]

I'm not totally unfamiliar with disability studies, so I know Feminists with Disabilities. :) I think I've recommended links of theirs before, on Glee, I really like that blog. Even if, like most blogs I've bookmarked, I don't read it as often as I want to. >.>

Thanks for mentioning those labels! I only knew of able-bodied, which might not longer be in use and is exclusive of physical ability anyway. Would you mind explaining to me why the labels emphasize ability as something temporary? Does it have to do with the fact that we will all, at some point or other, experience a disability (if only because of old age), or is there a reason I'm unfamiliar with?

[lounalune]

A person is defined as disabled when their ability to do certain things differs to a certain extent from other people of their age group, so old age is not a disability, though of course elderly people face many of the same difficulties as some people with disabilities, from access problems to abuse and the problems related to institutionalization. Still, I think that the definition makes sense, because I think that temporarily abled elderly people don't experience the same kind of discrimination as disabled people, if only because they are not seen as strange, and less seen as burdens because it is thought that they did contribute to society, while it is thought that disabled people don"t, and never did (which is, of course, bullshit

[greenie_breizh]

Thanks for the explanation - I think that's exactly why I was asking about the choice of word with "temporarily". It implies the situation will necessarily change, and the only way I could make sense of that was by relating it to old age, which is something different from disability (although there are overlaps, like you pointed out).

I definitely understand your frustration with people who experience disability "temporarily" through broken limbs, short illness, etc. It's an interesting balance between being able to empathize ('I am making effort to understand your perspective by listening to you and I occasionally relate it to similar experiences I've had') and appropriating someone's experience by always relating it to your own life ('I understand exactly what you have gone through because I went through x, y and z').

[chaoticidealism]

Hey :) Thanks for linking to my blog